11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

BIDJARA, GHUNGALU+ GARINGBAL PEOPLE BORN 1982, MORANBAH, AUSTRALIA LIVES+WORKS INBRISBANE, AUSTRALIA D Harding’s approach to material and process honours and embodies their Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal Country around the Carnarvon Ranges (Kooramindanjie) in Central Queensland. Their ongoing research and connection to Carnarvon Gorge has informed many of their works, which respond to ancient artistic and cultural practices while examining colonial and settlement histories through the lens of family experience. For the Asia Pacific Triennial, Harding presents Woori red 2024, an installation of woollen felt blankets, saturated with a mixture of gum acacia and earth pigments collected in a shared process with Elders, family and community on Country. The variegated hues, rigid texture and irregular shape of the blankets evoke hides or pelts of animal skin. Hand-felted by Harding in homage to ancestral possum-skin cloaks, the blankets hold a powerful presence, speaking to multiple layers of complicated histories and identities. Possum-skin cloaks — a provider of warmth, an enduring possession of cultural practice and important signifier of identity — were replaced by woollen blankets in mission days. The wool itself embodies national mythologies of Australian industrial success while acknowledging the reality of ecological destruction brought to bear by cloven-hoofed sheep, introduced on the land during colonial settlement. Pigmented with Harding’s familiar ‘Woori’ or Woorabinda red, from Ghungalu territory, the blankets literally carry Country. Reflecting on the significance of natural pigments as a marker and identifier of Country, Harding has said that they and their cousins can identify a specific location ‘just by pure pigment, an ochre’ and expand on their connections to and ancestral stories associated with that site and colour. 1 In some of Harding’s recent projects, these blankets were dried and packaged (as a practical and ecologically responsible solution to international transportation) to become vessels carrying the pigments, and Country, around the world. Onsite, the blankets were rehydrated, reviving the wool and releasing the pigment. Harding used this pigment to produce site-specific wall paintings in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland; Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France; and Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway. Woori red reflects the careful approach Harding practises — consulting, collaborating and adhering to cultural protocols — throughout the production of their works. In the process of creating Woori red , Harding encouraged and assisted seven family members from two generations to make their journeys across Ghungalu and Garingbal Country in Central Queensland. Their family’s matrilineal connections to places and potential art materials were shared among the artist’s mother, sister, a brother, Aunties, an Uncle and big cousin — reinforcing existing knowledge and connection for some family members, and introducing connection to places and stories for other family members in the troupe. Harding says: To share and live connection to Country through material culture and story is an elemental intention of the making of Woori red . The inclusion and collaboration among family members acts to reduce the isolating effects intended by the Queensland Mission System. 2 Throughout the project, Harding uplifts and empowers family members ‘through the knowledge that their inheritance is important’, reinforcing the validity of their ongoing cultural practices. 3 As the artist has commented, their work as an artist and researcher ‘is only one extension of this cultural continuum, and my family and I view my/our work as contributing to the canon of our cultural production’. 4 SOPHIASAMBONO NOTES 1 Dale Harding and Hannah Mathews, ‘Form X content — Through a lens of visitation: Dale Harding’, Monash University Art Museum , 28 April 2021, <www.monash.edu/muma/public-programs/ previous/2022/form-x-content/semester-1/form-x- content-through-a-lens-of-visitation-dale-harding/ resources/video-form-x-content-through-a-lens-of- visitation-dale-harding>, viewed June 2024. 2 D Harding, email to the author, 29 July 2024. 3 Bergen Kunstall, ‘D Harding: We breathe together, 18 November 2022 — 8 January 2023’ [exhibition handout], Bergen Kunstall , <www.kunsthall.no/en/ exhibitions/d-harding/>, viewed August 2023. 4 Hendrik Folkerts, ‘This is our time’, Frieze , no. 206, October 2019, p.245. DHARDING Artwork in progess using Ghungalu red soil 2024 / Images courtesy: The artist and Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 96 — 97